Did anyone catch X play last night on Tech TV. It's a video game show. The host talked about LOW: Showdown, and went to the Superstar Challenge in NYC.

He interviewed alot of them, like Hurricane, Matt Morgan, A-Train, and Kane. Kane sounds totally normal in real life. No raspy voice, no hatred for all things, or the white contact. Kane said that the smaller controllers are better, even though he's huge, which the host pointed out many times.

I totally agree with FleaDude about Morgan Webb's on-air personality. She's dry and bland and has absolutely no comedic timing whatsoever. She's on the show because she's got above-average boobs and plays lots of video games. Fanboys tune in to see a girl with an attractive chest talk about the new version of Everquest.

Originally posted by Excalibur05Well, if you DON'T like Morgan, you won't have to put up with her (or anyone else on TechTV for that matter) after June, seeing as they've all been shitcanned by Comcast.

Last I'd heard (and can find via Google), they're keeping X Play, so I don't know if they're really fired. However, they're moving everything to LA, so that's close enough to fired, I guess.

EDIT: Just checked on Leo Laporte's blog... you're right (leo.typepad.com). This is like the little kid pissing on the slightly bigger kid because the first kid's older brother mugged the other kid's parents.

Apparently the plan is to just keep the top 100 people from Tech TV...who want to stay, and plan to move to L.A. I guess.

It makes business sense from a couple different vantage points, I imagine.

A) Some people, namely Laporte, had just negotiated pretty sweet deals with Vulcan, which Comcast wouldn't likely want to honor.

B) They'll want to do all their own reshuffling, and it makes sense to just start fresh with that.

C) For whatever reason, they don't want TechTV's studio in San Fransisco. Most of the TechTV staff lives in San Fransisco. Any of them who don't want to move, now don't have to because they've been fired.

D) If they want to make this one whole network, they've already got a number of the staff they need (what really pisses me off is that they told TechTV to continue getting new hires). They won't need TechTV's website staff or graphics people or accountants or anything, because they've already got their own.

The bad thing about this whole thing is that it makes Comcast look like a bunch of shitheads. There's no way they come out looking good on this publically, especially not when they've been very public about their desire to create "synnergy" between the two networks. In the end, all they're doing is pissing everybody off. What they should have done is told their "Top 100" that they'd have to renegotiate their contracts to come in line with the rest of G4's people in similar positions (which is really just a cover for "We're making it look like we're treating TechTV staff in good faith") and then when the merge actually happened everybody with a shiny new Comcast contract will be in the clear, while everybody with a Vulcan contract will be out. But at least that way, they don't out and out fire EVERYBODY, and they make it look like they're trying to keep both networks strong. This way, it just looks like the black hole of a network network kicked the piss out of the moderately successful network. I mean, to use a wrestling example, it's seriously as if Ted Turner bought XPW and then bought TNA and fired everybody in TNA and stole their tape library and Fox Sports TV spot.

I mean, of the people whom I either know they're negotiating with, or think they'll keep I can only come up with:

Leo Laporte - Who was already in negotiations with Comcast, though I wonder how much this turned him off)Patrick Norton - Who probably has nothing better to do)Adam Sessler - Who is actually well respected in the gaming industry, and thus they're probably dying to have on G4 anyway.Morgan Webb - X-Play's ratings aren't good because everybody loves Sessler.Paul Block - To keep one member of TechTV's senior staff on board.

Other than that, I don't have any clue who would be on this 100 list of people they want to keep. I mean, I like Sarah, Martin and Yoshi, but they're not exactly setting any worlds on fire here.

And honestly if it's about spite, what exactly did I miss? Why would Comcast be upset at everyone at TechTV?

I don't know if "spite" is the right word, but basically G4 has been an absolutely abysmal project for Comcast. It's leaking money, nobody is happy there (or at least nobody WAS according to Wil Wheaton), and it has underperformed in every way imaginable.

Tech TV, on the other hand, is going for basically the same niche, and has been moderately successfull. They have one flagship show with an extremely loyal audience (ScreenSavers) and two shows which outperform a lot of "basic" cable programming (X-Play and Unscrewed). It was, as early as the middle of last year, turning profits, however, Paul Allen and Vulcan Ventures had sunk so much money into it that the returns weren't big enough and they wanted to sell it off to recoup. I think the only partner that wasn't interested in selling was one of the major Satellite Cos (DirectTV?) who own a fraction of the company and were coming out pretty well on it, I think.

So there may be a little jealousy there, yeah, but it was pretty widely reported at the beginning of the merger that Comcast was mostly just interested in TechTV because it had a much wider subscriber base (thanks to its Satellite connections in large part) than their little G4. So basically they'd just be buying up homes and hoping that the people watching TSS, X-Play and Unscrewed would keep watching their shows. However, when the merger was first announced, Comcast people went way out of their way to say that most of the major shows would be coming over in the merger because, ostenibly, they wanted to keep the fan base and ad revenues that those shows carried. However, a few months ago, most of those same people were saying that G4/Tech TV was going to stay focused on the "video game lifestyle" which didn't necessarily preclude Screen Savers, Call for Help, Unscrewed and the other general tech related ilk, but it certainly didn't improve their position. And now this. I guess we'll see in June how it all works out?

I still think if Comcast was so concerned about G4 being offered in more homes, they would make it available to non-digital subscribers. I get TechTV right now. I don't get G4. That's one home right there they could pick up. (I also imagine this means I'll lose TechTV altogether come June).

There is one fatal flaw with the premise of G4. Its a network devoted to video games. I can see people watching an hour or two of programming here or there, but why would you watch more than that? If you are so interested in games, why not just get up and hit the power button? At least with TechTV, you might be inspired to get on your computer, but you can still have the TV on when you do.

This isn't just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is full on infanticide.

You know at times I'm too literal. Are they firing everyone? Or keeping the top 100? Or firing everyone and trying to rehire the top 100? (Sounds like the latter) If they fire everyone and then try to hire back 100 people, isn't that a lot harder than doing it the other way around?

I can understand that some probably had just negotiated sweet deals, but wouldn't it be best to deal with them on an individual level, rather than say goodbye everyone, and then deal with them on an individual basis. You still have to convince them they're not worth the money (comps) that they were getting, right? And also hope they don't find something else in the meantime.

And exactly what tape libraries does TechTV have that would be worth any money a year from now? Most of the tech news would be old news. Thunderbirds... I guess I don't like the show and it seems like it's tremendously overplayed. Robot Wars? Please.

So what does that leave? A "similar" channel that's received by more homes, but whose loyalty comes from people who read about stuff like this on the internet (and are likely not to take their favorite staff member(s) getting canned)

So I'm befuddled, cause it doesn't make any sense to me. Of course to be fair, I have to concede I haven't previously been as financially successful as Comcast has, but...

Originally posted by SirBubNormYou know at times I'm too literal. Are they firing everyone? Or keeping the top 100? Or firing everyone and trying to rehire the top 100? (Sounds like the latter) If they fire everyone and then try to hire back 100 people, isn't that a lot harder than doing it the other way around?

The "happy" face Comcast is trying to put on this is that it frees the TechTV people in their 100 (now I'm hearing it's only 80) to search for other options before they decide whether or not to move to LA.

And exactly what tape libraries does TechTV have that would be worth any money a year from now? Most of the tech news would be old news. Thunderbirds... I guess I don't like the show and it seems like it's tremendously overplayed. Robot Wars? Please.

Apparently comcast does love Robot Wars. How about that? Actually, Comcast has been doing a lot already with old Call for Help and Screen Savers segments (especially the basic computing ones done for Cable in the Classroom). So I suppose they might want those, but other than that, yeah, everything is pretty topical.

One interesting note, and I say interesting only because I know there have been a few people on this board that like him, Pirillo just moved to L.A., so I suppose if they want to bring back Call for Help and Leo won't move down there, they've got a host.